Murder, Simply Stitched: An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery

by Isabella Alan

  Typically, I hated mornings. A lot. However, ever since Dodger moved in there were no more lazy mornings at my house. I dropped Oliver and Dodger off at Running Stitch and crossed the street to Willow’s tea shop.

  The chimes over the doorway clinked together as I stepped through the door of the Dutchman’s Tea Shop. I sidestepped a scarecrow with a cloth pumpkin for a head and holding a teacup. The tea shop was the only business on Sugartree Street that embraced Halloween, which was only a few days away. The Amish don’t celebrate Halloween. Out of respect for my quilting circle, I didn’t add any Halloween decorations to my shop.

  “The shop doesn’t open until eight,” Willow called from the tearoom.

  I followed her voice. “Willow, it’s me, Angie.”

  She turned and beamed. Her typically gray buzz cut was now a light shade of lavender. I wasn’t sure if it was a mistake, a preparation for a Halloween costume, or a color she chose for every day. Knowing Willow, I bet on choice number three. I knew better than to ask. A simple question of Willow’s style choices usually led to a three-hour conversation.

  Her reading glasses hung from a colorful beaded chain around her neck and she wore her signature loose blouse over a baggy pair of jeans. If anyone was out of place in Rolling Brook, it was Willow Moon. However, at the same time, she was a perfect fit because she was liked by both the Amish and English residents of the township.

  She clapped her hands. “I’m so glad you’re here. I need a taster for my Halloween tea recipe.”

  Uh-oh. I should retreat while I have the chance. “Willow, I don’t drink that many different kinds of tea. I’m a Lipton girl. I’m not the best person to judge your new drink. Maybe someone like Farley Jung would be better suited.”

  She snorted. “Hogwash. You are a perfect candidate, especially if you don’t drink much tea. You will be able to give me the non-tea-drinker’s opinion.”

  Without testing it I could give her that opinion. It was awful. I still was in recovery from Willow’s other recipes.

  “Have a seat.” Willow pointed to the dining table closest to the front window. In the middle of one table sat what I could only describe as a cauldron. I swallowed. “What’s that, Willow?”

  “Tea.”

  “In a cauldron?” I squeaked.

  She slipped into the chair across from me. “Is it too much?”

  “We’re in Holmes County not Salem.”

  She sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Wrong clientele for it. It’s a shame. Not too many people can say they’ve received tea service from a cauldron.”

  “You could use it with the English customers. I doubt they would mind.”

  She held on to the purple crystal, which hung from her neck. “That’s a wonderful idea, Angie. I will only get it out if there are no Amish in the shop.” She dropped her hand. “Would you like a cup of tea from my cauldron?”

  Her question was a little too Hansel and Gretel for me. “Oh, well, I’m not thirsty.”

  “All you have to do is taste it.”

  I edged closer to the table. “You want me to drink something that came out of that?”

  “Of course. It’s only a decoration. You don’t think I’m a witch, do you?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. The cauldron is making me nervous.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s only tea leaves and spices.”

  I saw the top rim of a fist-sized tea ball in the middle of the pot. Some dark black substance inside. Tea leaves and spices, right. I swallowed. “What flavor is it?”

  “I’m calling it Witches’ Bite.”

  And she claims not to be a witch. I did not find the name comforting. “You might not want to share that name with the Amish.”

  “Good point.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Pumpkin, sweet potato, and a special kick.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve never had sweet potato tea before.”

  “Then this will be your lucky day.” She walked over to the sideboard and removed two teacups and saucers. “It gives the tea an earthy quality.”

  I always wondered why people described food as having an earthy taste. Didn’t that mean it tasted like dirt?

  She used a ladle to spoon the tea into the two cups and placed a teacup in front of me. “You are here about Wanda, I presume.”

  I shifted my position on the bright blue wooden chair. “I am. When did you hear the news?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. It seemed like every person who came into the tea shop spoke of it.” Her face fell. “Wanda had her faults, but she was my friend and dedicated to the good of Rolling Brook. Her tactics were aggressive, but she got the results when no one else could.” She dabbed her eye with a paper napkin. “Are you going to try your tea?”

  “I’m going to let it cool a little bit,” I hedged.

  “Don’t let it cool too long. I find the sweet potato flavor dulls as it cools.”

  That didn’t sound good. I wondered how long I could postpone the taste test. “Did people know what happened?”

  “There were a lot of stories. The outsiders didn’t know much about what was going on, but a few locals said that the sheriff thought the Millers might be behind Wanda’s death.” She examined my face as she said that as if she were looking for a reaction.

  I cupped my cold hands around the mug. The tea smelled off. How I dreaded the first sip. “The Millers have nothing to do with Wanda’s death. It’s a terrible event for her family and for the town. The Millers are not involved.”

  “I heard she died holding one of Rachel’s fry pies in her hand.”

  I closed my eyes. How many details about Wanda’s death were already circulating throughout the county? “That doesn’t mean Rachel had anything to do with it.”

  Willow slipped on her reading glasses and made a note in her recipe book. “I didn’t see Aaron this morning when I stepped outside to grab the paper. Usually, he’s in the bakery close to four. I see him every morning, except Sunday, like clockwork at five when I go out for my paper. Is the bakery open today?”

  “I’m sure it will be. They didn’t close early yesterday.”

  She pointed at the cup in front of me. “It should be cool enough to drink now.”

  I did my best to keep my face neutral, but all I could think of was the horrible watermelon tea she made during the summer. It was like drinking a liquid watermelon sucker. And was it just me, or did sweet potato sound like a poor choice in tea ingredients?

  I raised the mug to my lips and sipped. As soon as the tea was in my mouth, my lips and tongue felt like they were on fire.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The burning sensation in my mouth wasn’t from the tea’s temperature but from a spicy ingredient. No wonder she called it Witches’ Bite.

  Willow watched me eagerly. “So?”

  “What’s in there?” I croaked. “There something sharp and it’s not sweet potato.”

  She twirled her crystal on its chain. “Cloves. I dropped a handful in the cauldron during a moment of inspiration. I thought it would give the tea some layers and kick.”

  “I feel like I’ve been kicked into the next county by those cloves. Water?” I asked weakly. “Can I have some water?”

  “Oh, pooh, Angie, it’s not that bad.” She stood up and walked behind the tea counter to the sink. She filled a coffee mug with water, brought it back to the table, and set it in front of me.

  I grabbed it and drank. It helped a little. At least it helped my mouth. The burning sensation simply moved to my throat. When I could speak, I said, “Don’t include the cloves. The cloves are a bad idea.”

  “Let me see.” She blew on her tea.

  “I’m not tasting that again.”

  “I know.” She wrinkled her nose. “This is for me.” She took a sip and jumped out of her chair for her own glass of water. After Willow and I both recovered from the tea, she placed a plate of warm orange scones in the middle of the table. “These should make up for the
tea.”

  I chose a scone and smiled. “It’s a start.”

  Willow sniffed her mug of tea, but she didn’t take another sip. “Mmm . . . I think it could use fewer cloves—I may have gotten carried away—and more sweet potato too.”

  It was time to return to the reason I was there. “What can you tell me about Wanda? What was she like? I knew her but not well.”

  Willow broke off a piece of orange scone and considered my question. “She was a friend. We were on several committees together over the years and then the township trustees. She was quite a bit older than me and has been a township trustee much longer. I was elected two years ago. I think Wanda had already been a trustee five or six years by the time I joined. She’s the longest standing member, even longer than Head Trustee Farley Jung. Everyone thought she would be a shoo-in for the election in a couple of weeks.”

  I stopped a piece of scone midway to my mouth. “Election? What election?”

  “The election to choose the new head trustee. Farley has held the post for six years and reached his term limit.”

  “Why don’t I know about this? I haven’t seen any signs up around town.”

  “Rolling Brook has an ordinance against political signs in the main shopping district because it would bother the tourists. With all the Amish, Rolling Brook isn’t the type of place where we talk about politics much.”

  Apparently Rolling Brook has a lot of ordinances I don’t know about.

  “Let’s see, what else do I know about her?” Her blouse billowed around her face as she moved. “Wanda was divorced.”

  “The sheriff mentioned that. Was it recent?”

  “About three years ago, so I would say recent enough. She and her ex-husband only speak through their lawyers.” She scrunched up her nose. “It didn’t end well.”

  “Why do they still need lawyers? They don’t have any children. Isn’t the divorce settled?”

  “Well, from what Wanda says her ex is trying to sue her for alimony. She always made more money than he did.”

  I blinked at her. Willow had turned into a wealth of information about Wanda.

  Before I could ask her more about this she moved on. “And then there was her nephew, who is a headache to be sure.”

  “I met him at the auction. Well, I sort of met him at the auction. What do you know about him?”

  “Reed?” Willow asked.

  I nodded.

  “He’s been giving her fits. From the little bit I heard from her, her sister is twenty-some years younger than she and wants to be an actress in LA. She shipped Reed to Ohio because he was too much trouble while she pursued her career.”

  “Poor kid.” I paused. “I heard about the covered bridge.”

  She sighed. “That’s not going to make him any friends in this county.” Willow sipped her tea. “He got into some trouble out there in California too. Caught with alcohol in school.”

  “You think he was acting out because his mother wasn’t paying attention?”

  Willow broke off another piece of scone. “It’s hard to tell. He’s not a happy kid. I saw Wanda with him once at the mercantile, and he looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else in the world.”

  “He’s a teenager. I can see why he wouldn’t love the mercantile.”

  She nodded and pulled a tray of silverware closer to her. She began to polish it. “I suspect the moment he turns eighteen he is out of here, if not sooner.”

  “He might not have to wait that long. Sheriff Mitchell says he doesn’t have any other family here in Ohio, so he will have to go back to California to live with his mom.” I scooted the offending teacup away from me. The orange scone had gone a long way to erase the taste of it, but just the smell of that tea made me nauseous. “What I don’t get is how he got the job at the auction yard.”

  She set the spoon she had polished on the table. “The Amish auction yard? They don’t hire English folks.”

  “He was working there yesterday on a school day. Wanda had to know since she was there too.”

  Willow examined her reflection in a butter knife. “I’ve never heard of them hiring any non-Amish before.” She set it in the basket.

  “The sheriff mentioned that Wanda had complained to the department about prank phone calls. Do you know anything about that?”

  She thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, I do recall her saying it in passing.” She stirred her tea. “I’m sorry to say I didn’t think much of it. Wanda was a suspicious woman and always claimed someone was upset with her or wanted to harm her. She’d been like that as long as I’ve known her, so when she complained about the phone calls, I thought it was nothing.”

  It seemed the sheriff wasn’t the only one who brushed off Wanda’s paranoia.

  It was time to ask her the questions that brought me to her doorstep in the first place.

  “Why can’t the Millers build the factory at the end of the street? What ordinance does it break?”

  She frowned for the first time. “Don’t you have a copy of the township ordinances? Every business should. Didn’t you get it in your welcome basket from the township?”

  “I didn’t get any welcome basket,” I said, and thought to myself, And what kind of place gives rules and regulations as part of a welcome basket anyway?

  She placed a hand to her cheek. “I’m so sorry. I must have forgotten to give you a basket. How silly of me. It slipped my mind because I was so caught up with the Watermelon Fest, and then you found that dead body in your shop. Something like that can derail a person’s thoughts.”

  It certainly could.

  She pursed her lips. “I’m sure I have a copy of the town’s ordinances in my office. Let me go grab it now. I really should have it memorized, but I admit I do not. I can’t even remember my own phone number at times. Farley asked us to have the building code memorized for the next meeting. That’s when we will discuss the Millers’ factory again.”

  There still was a chance the township would approve Aaron’s request? I sat up straighter in my chair. “When’s the next meeting?”

  “Friday. At seven in the evening in the Mennonite meetinghouse just a few blocks from here.”

  “That’s tomorrow. Will you know all the building codes by then?”

  “Phweet!” she sniffed. “I don’t have time to read it. Farley will know it backward and forward, there’s no reason I need to. Even if I tried I could forget it before the meeting.”

  “How long is it?”

  “It’s rather long. I’ll be right back.” She jumped out of her chair and disappeared behind the damask curtain that separated the kitchen from the tearoom.

  What does rather long mean? It could be a long night if I planned to read all of the township ordinances before the meeting tomorrow. I hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. All the ordinances couldn’t be about building codes, could they?

  Willow returned one minute later holding a six-inch ringed binder. Pieces of paper came loose from the three rings and threatened to float to the floor. She shoved them back in place, creasing them and mangling their edges.

  I gaped at the binder. “That was supposed to be in my welcome basket? How could anything else fit in there?”

  “Oh, we are able to fit in a few of my specialty teas and some jam. The baskets we give the new people in town are pretty big.”

  They would have to be.

  She set it on the table with a thud.

  I caught both of our teacups as they threatened to tip over. “It’s the size of the dictionary, and not any dictionary, like OED-sized.”

  “You can see now why I am not too eager to memorize it.” She drummed her fingers on the top of it. “It is rather lengthy. I think the problem is instead of revising old ordinances we just add new ones. That’s where it can get tricky because unless the old ordinance has been specifically ruled out by the new one, both may be in effect.” She sighed. “No one in Rolling Brook governance would make it a day in Columbus let alone Washington.”


  I pushed my half-eaten scone away and gingerly lifted the cover of the binder. The first page was old mimeograph paper. My mouth fell open.

  “We haven’t gotten around to putting it all on the computer either. How can we? Even though we’re elected officials, no one in the township trustees is paid to do the work. We don’t have time to type this entire thing. Of course, the later ordinances are saved on a computer.”

  “No one has gone through this and removed any old documents? Not once?”

  Willow thought for a minute. “I can’t say that. I think a council member did it in the seventies. That’s why there are all the typed pages. I imagine when the township began the ordinances were handwritten. There would have been much fewer ordinances then, so maybe it wasn’t such a big job.”

  Maybe I was aghast about the ordinances because I knew how much they would have upset Ryan, my ex-fiancé who was a lawyer in Texas. Nothing drove him crazy like disorganized legal documents, and he complained about it to me constantly. If he saw this mess, he would have needed CPR.

  Willow squinted at me. “If you are so upset by it I’m sure the township trustees would be happy for you to volunteer to organize it better.”

  I made an X with my arms. “No, thank you. Don’t look at me for that job.”

  A teacup-shaped sticky note stuck out of the top of the binder. She flicked it with her finger. “This is as far as I got.” She laughed.

  I picked up the binder and placed it in front of me. “You could use this thing as an arm weight.”

  Carefully, I turned to the page about the building code. The sticky note marked the title page to the section on mimeograph paper. Oh boy. “You didn’t get very far.”

  “I haven’t read any of it yet. It’s so boring. Who cares how wide doorways need to be? Yawn.” She covered her mouth in a mock yawn.